Should You “Just Be Yourself” In Dating?

One of our community members asked:

I’m trying to figure out how to go on dates and be natural instead of a stiff who has memorized a bunch of games, while still having game. So my position is just trying to learn from the last couple of dates what went well on the surface. I kept conversation going and girls seemed to enjoy themselves, but by the end of date I could tell that they clearly weren't very attracted to me I have been struggling a lot with self esteem around this.

So what should I do to improve.

The real answer IMO is that these two are not mutually exclusive! A lot of guys concerns about getting coaching or self-improvement is that somehow it's cheating or unauthentic to learn new skills. This is of course ridiculous the same way that saying going to school to learn to read or do math in school is inauthentic because you're not "being yourself" from the day you were born.

The idea is you want to learn as many skills, techniques, and mindsets as possible for dating, and then INTERNALIZE these concepts so that they don't have to think about them anymore (this may involve a period of time where to practice you have to "fake it til you make it" for a while until you learn them). At this point, the advice of "just being yourself" is EXACTLY what you want to do, because that will allow you to be present and in the moment and genuine, and the teachings you learned will apply themselves automatically out of habit.

Learning to understand male-female dynamics and psychology is what will help really drive these concepts home in your head and internalize everything. You don't need to change who you are, but you do need to understand how to speak and act in terms that women understand. Right now you're not doing that consistently, hence the lack of attraction on dates.